The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 2 (of 3)Tyerman, L. (Luke)
History
The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 2 (of 3)
Tyerman, L. (Luke)
Methodism; Wesley, John, 1703-1791
Zinzendorf and his friends are charged with “misguiding many honest
hearted Christians; with distressing, if not ruining, numerous
families; and with introducing a whole farrago of superstitions, not
to say idolatrous fopperies, into the English nation.” The _Unitas
Fratrum_ are accused of “walking round the graves of their deceased
friends on Easter day, attended with hautboys, trumpets, french horns,
and violins.” Zinzendorf had suffered incense to be “burnt for him,
in order to perfume the room before he made his entrance among the
brethren”; and had allowed a picture to be exhibited in a lovefeast,
“representing him handing a gentleman and lady up to the side of Jesus
Christ.” It was alleged, that the married women were “ordered to wear
blue knots; the single women, pink; those that were just marriageable,
pink and white; widows that were past childbearing, white; and those
that were not so, blue and white.” Hannah Nitschmann, the general
eldress of the Fetter Lane congregation, wore “the episcopal knot,”
and might be seen sitting at the head of a table, surrounded with
eldresses and deaconesses, covered with artificial flowers, and bearing
a small altar on which stood a cross composed of glittering stones,
and environed with wax tapers. On Hannah’s birthday, the floor of one
of the rooms in the house of the single brethren was covered with sand
and moss, amid which a star was made of coloured pebbles. Upon the
star was placed a gilded dove, spouting water from its mouth. The room
was curiously decked with moss and shells; and here Zinzendorf, Hannah
Nitschmann, Peter Bohler, and other labourers sat, in high dignity,
beneath an alcove made of pasteboard. Upon a table was an altar covered
with shells, and, on each side of the altar, a bloody heart emitting
flames. The place was illuminated with wax candles; and musicians were
fixed in an adjacent room, while Zinzendorf and his company performed
their devotions, and regaled themselves with sweetmeats, coffee, tea,
and wine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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